


long ago and far away

by firstaudrina



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, more friendshippy than shippy, with some bonus casual sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 07:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2723918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He lets Natasha waltz him around the room ("This is not actually a waltz, Steve," she says), leading him but pretending like it's him doing the leading. Afterwards she deems him in need of practice but, in her words, "not a total disaster."</p>
            </blockquote>





	long ago and far away

**Author's Note:**

> Set somewhere between Avengers and Cap2.

The night is still and silent, and Steve's apartment has too many windows. Sometimes it feels like he can't breathe for all that the sky is pressing in on him.

He takes to going to the gym in the middle of the night, sucking in the antiseptic air and trying to tire himself out – and trying, and trying. The emptiness of the gym is only marginally better than the emptiness of his apartment because at least this isn't supposed to be his home. It isn't full of things that are supposed to belong to him, things that are supposed to comfort him. 

One night he arrives to find Natasha there. 

It isn't one of his usual nights, but today's mission had been especially unexciting and he was left with energy to burn. So maybe that accounts for them running into each other when they never have before. Steve's first instinct is to politely leave her to it, but instead he's stuck to the spot. Because Natasha is dancing. 

The way she moves has always struck Steve as possessing of a particular grace, so watching her dance isn't so much a surprise as it is a puzzle piece being pressed into place. Her command of her body is absolute; she reminds him of models he used to draw in class, that kind of confidence. He really ought to excuse himself, but on one twirl past him Natasha arches her eyebrow slightly and brings an elegant hand up for a little salute, so Steve figures it might be okay to linger. 

There is something almost ghost-like about the way she dances. Her muscles are stark and beautiful, and it's clear there is nothing her body does that she doesn't mean to do. Steve has always admired people with that kind of control; it's something that is still relatively recent for him. 

Natasha has never asked him what he was like before and it's a courtesy that Steve appreciates greatly, so in response he has never asked about her before either. It gives him the sense that he's in on a secret right now, seeing her in simple black leggings with her hair in a bun and red pointe shoes on her feet. They're not the fiery red of her hair but a deep, glossy crimson – like the lipstick of the girls back home, like cherries in syrup. 

When she's done, her limbs seem to fold back in like butterfly wings. There is the thinnest sheen of sweat on her skin and the hair at the nape of her neck is dark with it. "I feel like I should applaud," Steve says, his voice soft in the quiet.

"You probably should," Natasha says. It can be difficult to tell with her, but she doesn't seem bothered. If anything, she seems relaxed. She goes off to fiddle with the low music. "Want to?"

"Applaud?"

Natasha glances over her shoulder at him. "Dance."

"Don't know how."

She selects a song before turning back to face him, her expression amused. "Just as well. They aren't doing it the way you'd know how anymore." She tilts her head, gesturing him closer. "Come on. I'll show you."

Steve feels an acute pain somewhere in the vicinity of his sternum, or possibly just in the back of his brain, but he dutifully puts his bag down and goes to stand in front of Natasha. She puts one of his hands on her waist, solid and firm beneath his fingers, and holds the other aloft. Her arms fall into place atop his. She looks up at him, head tipping back, and then goes up on her toes to bring them closer in height. He's still a good deal taller, but it makes him smile, which makes her smile. It's small and enigmatic and very Natasha, but it feels special anyhow – maybe because this is something private that she's allowing him to have. And if he's honest, it's something private he's letting her have too. 

"I'll keep it simple, old man," she says. "Don't want to break a hip."

He lets Natasha waltz him around the room ("This is not actually a waltz, Steve," she says), leading him but pretending like it's him doing the leading. Afterwards she deems him in need of practice but, in her words, "not a total disaster."

"High praise indeed," Steve jokes, but the thing of it is, it's true. 

Natasha gives him a considering up-and-down look before saying, "Same time next week," in a way that's definitely not a question.

 

 

They're back in New York for a mission and they end up with some time to kill, so Natasha takes Steve along to Clint's place in Bed Stuy. They arrive to something of a party – up on the roof, the grill going, a mix of Avengers and Clint's neighbors in attendance. Bruce is at one corner explaining something to two small children. Tony is entertaining a small crowd while Pepper sips wine and corrects him. Steve tries to be helpful at first but ends up perched on the ledge sipping a beer. 

Natasha finds her way over to him eventually, dancing a little, loose and easy and in tune with the music. She has a beer in one hand but he notices that when she takes a sip the level doesn't change. He wonders just how much effort she puts into appearing at ease.

"Having fun?"

"Sure thing," Steve says, but he gestures behind her. "Not as much as them, though."

Almost everyone else is kind of drunk, and Clint is in fact giving Pepper a spin to the amusement of the other guests. 

"I don't see how this is fair," Tony complains. Pepper is laughing brightly as Clint dips her. "Friends don't sweep other friends' lady friends off their feet with unexpected dance abilities." 

He doesn't seem too bothered though, taking a seat with Steve and Natasha to watch. "I was not aware Clint was so bendy."

"He has many talents," Natasha says. "Well, sort of."

"Don't have to look out for this with the likes of you, do I, Cap?" Tony says. "You're not gonna Lindy Hop into Pep's heart next, are you?"

"No plans on it," Steve says easily. "Don't know how to Lindy Hop."

"Oh, don't sell yourself short," Natasha says. She taps her beer bottle against his knee in a friendly way. "You've got moves."

" _Cap's_ got moves?" Tony interrupts. "That I will believe when there is video evidence."

Natasha just shrugs. "Steve's got moves," she asserts, and gives Steve a little sideways look. 

"I don't even want to know what you crazy kids are getting up to in our nation's capital," Tony remarks before going to save Pepper from Clint, though she doesn't seem particularly interested in the saving.

"Just some good clean fun," Steve says, though Tony is out of earshot by now.

It's been almost a month of midnight dance lessons.

"Oh yeah," Natasha agrees. "We're practically nuns."

 

 

Steve is watching Natasha as she does lazy little pirouettes, her gaze firmly on the mirror. He thinks of Natasha as a teammate first but there are moments, often late at night like now, when other things cross his mind, like her ratio of waist to hips. Sometimes he likes to pretend it's artistic interest. Sometimes he doesn't.

"You're not gonna ask, are you?" 

He snaps to attention, pulling his eyes from the curve of her waist to meet her gaze in the mirror. "Ask what?"

"Where I picked up all these tricks."

Steve shrugs. "Isn't really my business, is it?"

Natasha is still looking at him in the mirror but her expression shifts, becomes almost intrigued. "No," she agrees. "It's really not." She holds out her hands for him. "Alright, come here."

Steve isn't sure what the point of this exercise is exactly. It may just be a round of get-the-old-guy-out-of-his-shell, which Natasha is apparently a fan of if all those potential dates she pushes on him are any indication. It's possible there's no point at all, no ulterior motives, just two people who can't sleep trying to burn off the excess night. 

Natasha says he's getting better.

Steve does like learning a new thing to do with himself, with this body he sometimes thinks he doesn't take enough advantage of. Time was he would have given up anything just to be healthy, and now – well. Now he's got his health. 

He doesn't think the choreography is unlike a fight at the end of the day – it's all about being in tandem with another person, advancing and retreating, anticipating another person's move before they make it. 

"Also like sex," Natasha says. "How long's it been for you – eighty, ninety years?"

"You're overshooting it by a couple decades," he tells her, and receives a small Natasha smile in return. 

"Can't wait forever, Gramps," she says. 

Steve doesn't mind the jokes, but every once in a while he wants to remind people that he's not really that old, that he still hasn't had a thirtieth birthday. But at the same time it wouldn't be true. He carries all those years with him anyway. Time presses in on him so heavily that sometimes he almost misses being out of commission. Sometimes he almost misses the cold. 

"I don't mind waiting for now," he says.

Natasha gets an almost soft look on her face, the kind of look Steve gets a lot from waitresses and baristas and all kinds of kindly strangers. 

"Hey now," Steve says. "Not you too. I get enough of that pity from everyone else."

She makes a point of stepping on his feet after that.

 

 

On a night that is not altogether particular or different, Natasha puts herself in his lap.

He's found himself looking at Natasha more than he means to lately, but only here in this brightly lit gym where his guard is down, or hers is, or where they both pretend their guard is down. He's been getting the feeling that Natasha's looking at him too. He's not blind to that kind of thing, whatever she says; he's just patient about it.

Steve puts one hand on her waist, the other on her lower back, waiting; she touches his shoulders and his neck, feels the shape of his arms. It just sort of happens, like that. Natasha does the rearranging and the unzipping, and his hands roam over her body. It isn't altogether different from the fighting or the dancing, except he thinks it's less fraught than both; it's not exactly lusty or romantic, just sort of… Steve's not sure there's a word for something two people want in equal measure, without expecting anything from it either. Friendly, maybe. They don't kiss. It doesn't even occur to him.

He's left with a series of pleasurable impressions: the tilt of Natasha's head and the flicker of green eyes beneath closed lids. Her sharp collarbone and full breasts, the contrast of her skin and black shirt. The way the heel of her hand grinds into his chest as she moves on him. And how when she comes she bites her lip but hardly makes a sound. 

The whole room has the sense of the un-talked-about, because they don't, really. What they do in this room isn't a part of the real world, where they wear skintight clothes and toss around quips and save the world. It's not a bad thing, Steve thinks. It's just private.

Afterwards she lingers in his arms for just a minute, her breath in his ear, and he wonders what to say, what he could say. 

"Tell me," she murmurs, and he must be figuring her out because he anticipates the joke right before she says it: "Was that the first time since 1945?"


End file.
